Self-Assembling 3D Mini-Tumors Are Poised to Become a New Tool for Studying Cancer

What started out as a way for Howard Young, Ph.D., to thin out his garden last fall turned into the NCI at Frederick Green Team’s Plant Swap. The group held its Fall Plant Swap on October 24, encouraging all members of the Fort Detrick community to pick up a free plant or swap a plant of theirs for another. “Those who love to garden introduce others to the joy of gardening,” said Dolores Winterstein, a member of the Green Team and the coordinator of the Fall Plant Swap.

Scientists at NCI and Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR) are partnering with the Lustgarten Foundation to test whether a vitamin D derivative will make a difference when combined with a conventional anticancer drug in treating tumors of the pancreas.

Leidos Biomedical Research reclaimed the Defelice Cup trophy from NCI at the eighth annual Ronald H. Defelice golf tournament, held October 14. The final score was 15–7, with Leidos Biomed tying the series 4 to 4. Fourteen players on each team battled it out at Rattlewood golf course in Mount Airy, Md.

The ping of an aluminum bat off a ball or the thump of a pop-up fly ball caught in a glove are two sounds familiar to baseball fans. Slow-pitch softball sounds—like those in the August game between mixed teams of NCI and Leidos Biomedical Research (formerly SAIC-Frederick) players—are similar.

More than 50 Werner H. Kirsten student interns and college interns presented their research at Summer Student Poster Day on August 6 in the Building 549 lobby. Joseph Bergman, a high school intern in the Center for Cancer Research Nanobiology Laboratory, participated in the event “for the opportunity to present my summer research. It allowed me to meet people and get the experience of sharing and explaining my work.”